Finally.

Today, I completed my download of openSUSE 11.0 (after my recent Vista failure) and set about installing it. It was a DVD of the latest ISO from openSUSE. My machine is the same Acer Ferrari 5000 (2.0 GHz X2 AMD Turion 64, 2GB RAM, ATI X1600 Mobility Radeon).

I had said earlier that I was really going to put this one to the blade. Why? Because openSUSE 10.3 happens to be my favourite distro so far, and I was under the hope that this would be a good if not better. And I would test this with KDE 4, because that is the only real reason I would shift to 11.0 from 10.3

Installation

Much has already been said about this in other places. The install is good and pretty, etc, etc, but I found more than one point of dislike about it. On my machine (which has a 16:10 widescreen), the installer probably tried to adapt a 4:3 output to it. Bad stretchy result. Not that it does not do the same in other distros, but here, the very graphics make it look bad.

Secondly, I noticed a lack of options here: deep configuration was not available. For me, and half my LAN, wireless etc. being manually controlled, this was a step down. Finally, there was no update sequence.

Credit where credit due: the installation was smooth, painless, and fast.

Problems, to begin with…

Yes, I had problems to begin with. During the loading screen, the screen would go black and stop. The End.

I had to then go into Failsafe mode, configure my network (which had not been done during install), and install ATI drivers. The configuration turned out to be easy and effective - the Network Manager worked smoothly for me. The installation of the drivers also went well. What did not go so well was that the One-Click Install I had earlier tried to use from the openSUSE ATI Wiki installed the debug drivers for me along with the debug kernel! It was a manual install, then, by using the package manager to download the fglrx drivers. Finally, the use of sudo aticonfig –initial sealed the the new drivers.

Polished interface

I have used Vista for a long time. I have occasioned on the Mac too. But nothing could take away the very core beauty of openSUSE 11.0 running the full Oxygen theme on 1680×1050. Of course, work comes before style, but this - was - stunning.

Desktop

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Problems again…

The impact of the interface over, bugs and problems started cropping up again. Desktop Effects brought its own host of problems - plenty of them. Slow response on my powerful machine. Tearing. Hangs on resizing windows. Failing multiple desktops. In the end, it failed the Compiz test, and I ended up turning off the effects.

Note: Plenty of people ask why Compiz is so favoured during reviews. Well, quite apart from the bling, it offers greater usability and visibility, but that is not at all. It forms a powerful test of the graphics setup of the machine and its performance. Fail the Compiz test, and chances are that the machine is not graphically - or performancewise - optimized.

And the perfectly working applications…

Fortunately, other things seemed to work well. The [customized] OpenOffice was good [opening my *docx files from Word 2007]. GIMP worked well, so did Inkscape. Amarok needed plenty of codecs before it ran my very varied collection of music formats. The Konversation client worked well too.

But the Dolphin-Konqueror conundrum confused me. It appears that Dolphin is not even default (My Computer opens up in Konqueror). But I have no problems with that at all.

The default configuration of everything - the Kicker Menu, the tray applets, the widgets, and the desktop - was what made me happy. From my point of view, everything was just so balanced. But that, of course, is an opinion.

More good things

I was also shocked at the high stability of openSUSE 11. Compiz aside, the rest of the whole OS did not crash or hang even once! From what I had heard about KDE 4.0, I was expected lots of problems. The fact that everything held together came as surprise.

I also liked Yast2 a lot. The speed has improved (not that I ever really found it slow), but the power remains increased.

But most off all, I liked the way openSUSE has everything for everyone. Sounds a little far-fetched, and some people may call it an idealization with lack of direction, but I fail to see where one can fault them for providing so much on a single DVD.

But would I keep it?

I am highly tempted to let the negatives weigh heavily, and say no, and go back to SUSE 10.3 with its old KDE 3.5.

It did not work out of the box for me - I had to spend quite some time messing around to make it work fully (even then, Compiz a.k.a graphics causes problems).

But once that was done, I was in love with it.

Working in openSUSE 11 after the troubles of Vista and the whims of other OSs was a magical experience. Things seemed to get done. Everything was available in a few clicks. The relatively small problems aside, I had a good time.

So would I keep it? Actually, I have already kept it.

Update: I have received comments about the deep configuration that I missed. It seems there is an option to disable this “automatic” configuration, but frankly, I either missed it, or it did not exist for me. Likewise, it seems that the updates have been integrated into the ‘add on’ section via a check mark.

But what I really missed was a mention of Zypper. How could I miss it? It is fast, powerful, and flexible. No longer is apt-get of Ubuntu the king. Besides, YaST integrates well with Zypper - indeed this Zypper may be one of the reasons SUSE’s package management is now so fast!

Thanks to Anubisg1 for bringing it to light.

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